It would that the above articles were all written prior to the release of Halo: Combat Evolved, and in the case of dogwalker's entry, without having (yet) played it.
Whilst many of Bungie's back catalogue have had the potential to be great, yet not been as well received as they might, Halo really does succeed in all the ways that the other games may have failed. How so?
- The control system is by far and away the best ever for a console-based First-Person Shooter game. This was always a cause of hesitation as to whether I should buy an XBox for me, but having done so I can now safely say that it works damned nearly as well as the mouse/keyboard combination so favoured by PC FPS players.
- The easier difficulty levels give in-game tutoring whenever you encounter a new feature of the game, such as using the ever-present melee attack, or climb into a vehicle (more on them later).
- The two-weapon only system introduces another dimension to a genre which has repeatedly been called stale; instead of carrying around a mini armoury, you must constantly think about which weapons are most appropriate, based on your enemies, the terrain and of course, what weapons are available. Running out of shotgun ammo on the later (Flood) levels certainly can force you to re-think your strategies.
- Without a doubt, the best Artificial Intelligence yet seen in a videogame. The difference between it and the AI from games such as, say Return to Castle Wolfenstein, is striking. The combination of interaction between friendly and hostile NPCs, the randomised starting positions of the enemies, and a variety of difficulty levels, means that the player will encounter many fantastic set-pieces which arise simply as a result.
- Seamless transition from First-Person Shooter gameplay to vehicle gameplay, be that on the ground in a jeep, an alien hoverbike, tank or even a single-person fighter. The vehicles work so well that you wonder how it is that just about every other FPS game has so horribly buggered up vehicles.
There are other things that make Halo great, an interesting storyline and fantastic graphics amongst things, but whatever criticisms you level at it, you cannot claim this game to be anything other than genre-defining. Like Half-Life before it, Halo has taken the FPS genre, turned it upside-down and given it a good shake.
As an aside in response to the remarks of Sky and Twiin, Halo will still be released on both the Macintosh and PC; the conversion is being handled by Gearbox Software (of Half-Life: Opposing Force fame) and is due for release between summer and autumn 2003.